BERLIOZ’ “DAMNATION” AS A VIDEO SPECTACULAR Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, N.Y.; November 18, 2008 Berlioz’ “La Damnation de Faust” is not an opera; the composer called it a “légende dramatique,” but it is more like a dream, a hallucinatory voyage of the soul and mind of a Romantic human being. It is told through a series of tableaux of fantasies, passions and “happenings” which fade into and out of one another. Students come and go; war is waged; a love affair begins and ends; a pact is made with the devil. I’ve always felt that the work’s dreamlike ambiance would make it an ideal piece of movie-making. The Met’s new production is, of course, live-action, but its video imagery includes and envelopes the singers; it is movie-like in its ability to create a fluid panorama both visual and emotional, and it is unlike anything I can recall. It is unreal and surreal at once: a scaffolded grid of twenty-four cubes backs the stage; scrims are used to project images, both moving and still, from the front and rear. Imagine the world’s largest flat-screen television in the highest possible definition. Sometimes the back of the grid is mirrored, sometimes not; characters walk and dance in each box. When the (real) soldiers climb up through the projected grass (on cables), their world undulates because the grass is a projection on a scrim; the effect is illusory and the realization that the soldiers themselves are causing the effect is all the more remarkable. A boat on a “lake” tips over and there is a type of underwater ballet. Suddenly the backdrop is a series of Gothic stained glass windows and a Christ is suspended from a cross. Then five Christs. Mefistofeles touches a tree and it withers and dies. Interactivity and morphing at the opera – what next? It is the creation, along with interactive video designer Holger Fortner, of Robert Lepage, the man responsible for one of Cirque de Soleil’s phantasmagoric productions, and it is dazzling. It may not turn “Damnation” into an opera, but it creates its own drama. When the jaw is not dropping from the sheer marvel or beauty of it all, the intellect is dazzled. Musically, conductor James Levine and his superb orchestra strive for clarity and elegance, missing out on some of Berlioz’ gigantic moments, but then again, it is being treated as an opera and not as a tone poem with voices. The music is entrancing but does not overwhelm as it normally does in concert. Marcello Giordani sings Faust with as much true class as he can muster, but his is not the type of French, suave tenor that the music requires. He maintains a fine legato but his ascents to high notes supposed to be sung softly come out as little, pinched squawks. Susan Graham’s Marguerite, on the other hand, is ideal. Her movements are small and uncertain, her singing the very soul of restrained passion, her tone lush. John Relyea’s Mefistofeles, despite being in a silly, red costume and plumed hat, is handsomely sung and wicked. The major praise, however, goes to the Met chorus, who does most of the work (solo singing takes up only about a third of the work). The music might have gotten lost in all of the production values but it didn’t quite. And to tell the truth, it still did not turn the work into a coherent dramatic event – an opera, say. But it’s a helluva show and will, I am certain, be a great popular success. Robert Levine